10/3/2023 - 10/9/2023
Section: Milepost 2297.6 to 2297.6
Total Trail Miles: 2295.5 Miles
Distance: 0 Miles
Moving Time:
Elevation Gain:
The next week passed by in a blur. My parents had rented a beautiful house in Bend, Oregon where my sister, Claire, was getting married to my soon-to-be brother-in-law John. A large contingent of my dad’s extended family came out and stayed at the house and got to meet JOhn as well as Amanda, whom they had never met before either. Our days were spent sleeping in as much as we could and preparing for the big event. I played some golf with my Dad, John and Claire and we went out a few times to enjoy the incredible micro-brew and nightlife scene in Bend. We thought we would get a chance to get some mountain biking in and had asked my parents to bring our bikes over from where they were stored in Corvallis, but the week whirled by so fast that there wasn’t any time.
The much awaited ceremony took place on October 7th at Todd Lake, 6 miles from Elk Lake where we had stopped on day 73 to meet Amanda’s parents. It was a beautiful ceremony which was graced with much better weather than we had experienced in the early days of October. Standing in the shadow of Broken Top mountain we all witnessed Claire and John say their vows and then proceeded to party late into the evening!
We stuck around most of the day after to get ourselves together and recover, but headed out in the afternoon after a lengthy string of goodbyes. We headed for Kennewick, where Amanda’s parents were going to host us and hold on to Toothless, our Transit Van, for the remainder of the hike. We got into Kennewick later that night and stayed up into the evening talking with the parents.
On the 9th of October we woke and got our things together. We ran some errands in the Tri-cities, including a stop at REI to replenish fuel and a few other odds and ends.
In the afternoon, we loaded up the Porter’s beastly 90’s F-350 and headed west. It was about halfway through this trip that I started to feel… off. In the beginning, it wasn’t anything too noticeable but by the time we began the climb up into White Pass, I was starting to feel real foul.
We arrived in White Pass in the early evening. It was chilly and raining. Given my deteriorating condition and the general shittyness of the evening, Amanda and I scrapped plans to sleep on the ground and decided to stay in the White Pass Village Inn. Amanda’s parents got the dogs out of the car and ran them around the parking lot while I went in to get a night in a room. Nothing was going on at White Pass. It’s not much more than the ski resort, which was dead, a lonely gas station and a very sad, off-season hotel. They certainly charged like it was in-season. After dropping almost 200 dollars for a little suite on the east end of the block, we unloaded our things into the hotel room. The Porters offered to take us back to the Tri-cities but we decided to stay. I think we are starting to get a little worried about taking the easy path out and finishing Washington later. We set out to finish this but we are getting to the end of our physical fortitude. It’s starting to get dark and the rain has really crushed us. We both felt like, if we went back to the east side now, we might not restart this season, so we decided to stay on this crappy little pass and see what comes tomorrow.
After we got our things settled and said goodbye to the Porters I pretty much got in bed and passed out, listening to the rain pour down outside. “Well, that was fun while it lasted,” I said to Amanda “hopefully this is something I can get over quickly.” “Just get some rest,” she said, “ we’ll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.”
